"All this region is very level and full of forests, vines and butternut trees. No Christian has ever visited this land and we had all the misery of the world trying to paddle the river upstream." Samuel de Champlain

Comment from Diana Daunheimer on the closure of the Program on Water Issues (POWI) the nation's most celebrated and effective water study programs at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs:

For Schindler to suggest the Munk program worked so well, it rattled corporate interest, is preposterous. Not a damn thing has changed on industries unsustainable water use, contamination issues, appropriate monitoring, public health impacts of fracking, or the use of frac sand in operations, all across the country.

Hundreds of tonnes of frac sand were just dumped in the open on each and every lease site within meters of our home, some residual piles were left for months. "It's just sand", I was told by the Dave Johnson, the Environmental Manager with Angle Energy at the time, as he held a palm full of it up to my face to show me, both of us without proper PPE.

You would think that Mr. Schindler would be far more angry about aquifers being contaminated in Alberta, the 10,000 TDL's gifted to industry by the AER in the past couple of years alone, the massive amounts of damaged well bores that have gas migrations and surface casing vent flows, the risk to public health and surface and groundwater sources from the trillions of m3 of emissions and chemicals being used and produced by industry in Alberta every year, or the fact there is no appropriate groundwater monitoring done in Alberta with respect to industrial impacts of fracking.

Yet, he is silent on these important matters, just troubled about an administrative program getting the axe, while many Albertans and Canadians are living without safe water.

You can publish all the reports you want, tour around shaking hands, hosting conferences, stroking egos and collecting paycheques and sponsors, meanwhile, what happens in the field, is still harming people, water and environments. Most of what has come from the POWI is synergy, plain and simple.

On the matter that universities should be the forum for our academic research and science, I digress some. The University of Calgary is such a pet to industry, the leash and collar are visible in nearly every media release and "scientific" report published. You can refer to how Dr. David Eaton has obfuscated the truth on induced seismic events caused by fraccing or review the information posted on hydraulic fracturing within the Energy Education site, hosted by the U of C. The misleading content is an embarrassment to post secondary education and a gleaming beacon of industrial influence. Of course, there is also the controversy about Elizabeth Cannon, president of the U of C, and her resignation from her role as independent director of the Enbridge Income Fund, to which she was compensated $130,500.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The reality is, there are few, if any, integral organizations, including our post secondary institutions, that are truly working in the public interest and are free from corporate influence.

1 comment:

I am honoured that you have taken the time to translate and post my comment on the closure of the Munk School of Water. Thank you very much for this and for your compassionate dedication for protecting our precious waterways. My best, Diana.

I'm the second generation of my family that lives in Richelieu, Quebec, in Canada. My family tree, both from my mother's and my father's side, has its roots in Quebec since the beginning of the 1600s: my ancestors crossed the ocean from France, leaving Perche and Normandy behind them. Both French AND English are my mother tongues: I learned to talk in both languages when I was a baby, and both my parents were perfectly bilingual too.